Mortal Kombat

In the early 1990s, fighting simulation video games, or “versus fighters,” enjoyed a surge in popularity. The most prominent of these games were Street Fighter II: The World Warrior (Capcom, 1991) and Mortal Kombat (Midway, 1992). Like many games before and after, Mortal Kombat found itself at the crux of technological innovation and public controversy. While Street Figther II trades in a cartoon aesthetic, the more realistic graphics and over-the-top violence of Mortal Kombat made the game a target for criticism. As the controversy ballooned into a broader cultural debate about violent video games, profits from Mortal Kombat soared. Its console release was a massive success, and the game spawned a continuing series of sequels and spinoffs.

The popularity of Street Fighter II in 1991 inspired Midway to make its own foray into the fighting simulation market. While mimicking the basic gameplay mechanics of that game, Mortal Kombat emphasizes visual realism through its use of digitized images of real martial artists, while simultaneously pushing its violent content into the unreal: In the game's “finishing moves,” characters eviscerate one another with their bare hands, beheading their opponents and ripping out their internal organs.

The game's combination of visual realism and extreme brutality was an unwelcome development in [Page 403]the eyes of many who were already wary of violence in video games. The late 1980s had seen arcade games such as NARC (Midway, 1988) and Splatterhouse (Namco, 1988), which featured graphic depictions of gore and invited players to engage in what some took to be gratuitously violent acts. While those earlier games sparked controversy, Mortal Kombat's extreme popularity made it an opportune target for groups interested in censoring video game content.